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Bearing the unique Lightning legendary effect, it fires an electrical discharge that arcs between targets, and uses fusion cells as ammunition. Due to its arcing nature, the Tesla rifle is capable of damaging multiple enemies at once, but with a limited range. It is an ideal choice for close range crowd control, e.g. feral ghouls.

Victims killed by a critical strike are turned into a blue ash pile, similar to the mechanic of lasers.

For charging variants, the weapon glows a greenish yellow color when fully charged. The origin of the light isn't clear, and is easy to miss if one doesn't know to look for it, or in certain lighting. The rifle variant takes approximately three seconds to charge.

The Commando perk affects the automatic barrel and the other barrels are affected by the Rifleman perk.

When using the rifle in a crowded place, a shot that hits an enemy can arc between friendly NPCs also (with the exception of companions).

The charging shotgun barrel sometimes does full damage at any distance because the shots may all jump to one target, then to the next, etc.

The Tesla rifle offers the highest damage-per-shot for all weapons that use fusion cells as ammunition.

The Tesla rifle is one of the most efficient weapons in Survival mode, offering high damage and using very lightweight ammunition. Per pound, without damage boosting perks and with the charging barrel, the weapon can deal around 3,000 points of damage per pound of fusion cells (by comparison, a .50 hunting rifle deals 870).